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(1938 - 2013)
At the beginning of this year assoc. prof. RNDr. Petr Lukáš, CSc. dr. h. c. passed away fully unexpectedly. The scientific community has lost an excellent erudite researcher who advanced the knowledge on fatigue of materials. His coworkers have lost an esteemed colleague and friend.
Petr Lukáš spent his whole professional life in the Institute of Physics of Materials, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic in Brno. He attached the Institute in the sixties of the last century as a young researcher and finished his career as a very successful Director.
The main research areas of Petr Lukáš were physical aspects of the mechanical behavior of metallic materials with the emphasis on fatigue of metals. He markedly contributed to present knowledge on basic mechanisms of fatigue damage of metals and alloys. He was author of about 120 high-quality publications in scientific journals indexed in ISI Web of Knowledge, several monographs and more than 160 contributions in proceedings of prestigious international scientific conferences. The most important from his monographs is the book “Fatigue of Metallic Materials” which was published in Czech, twice in English and in Japanese.
Petr Lukáš was aware of the importance of personal contacts of researchers. His deep beliefs stemmed from his sad experience with the restrictions of free change of opinions which was an attribute of the era before the Iron Curtain in Europe break down in 1989. After this change he was very active in the re-integration of the Czech scientific community into the international one. From the position of the Director of the Institute of Physics of Materials Academy of Sciences he supported the organization of MSMF conference series in Brno. He has an undisputed merit on the existence and the present high level of this scientific event.
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